Friday, November 15, 2013

Brit on trial for gay sex in Uganda: ‘I’m living in fear’

Gay rights campaigners are furious as a British man and his Ugandan lover go on trial for filming an home-made porn video
11 NOVEMBER 2013 | BY JOE MORGAN
A British man on trial for gay sex in Uganda has said he is living in constant fear.
Ex-pat Bernard Randall, 65, is facing up to seven years in prison for gross indecency and allegedly trafficking obscene material after police found a video on his laptop of him having sex with a Moroccan.
His 30-year-old Ugandan live-in partner Albert Cheptoyet is also being charged.
The retired banker’s picture was splashed across the front page of notoriously homophobic tabloid Red Pepper, beneath the headline ‘Exposed’.
Randall has said he is now moving house every couple of days out of fear of attack. He cannot fly out of the country due to the Ugandan government holding his passport until his trial.
‘I never know if someone is going to recognise me, be anti-gay and attack me,’ Randall said, as reported by The Times.
Moses Solomon Male, a pastor, appeared on television condemning Randall.
‘[Homosexuals] control the police, they control the judiciary, they even hold the Government to ransom,’ he said.
Same-sex relationships are already punishable by 14 years jail in Uganda with politicians threatening to make the laws even tougher by extending the death penalty to ‘repeat offenders’.
But the country is still likely to be sensitive to criticism if they openly prosecute and imprison people simply for consensual gay sex. Its Anti-Homosexuality Bill, dubbed the ‘Kill the Gays Bill’, appears to now be on the back burner after international condemnation.
GSN sources who took these photos at the hearing said Anti-Homosexuality Coalition members were also present in court.
Ugandan publications have claimed the pair were going for or had gone for ‘medical tests’ to discover if they had gay anal sex.
But Ugandan prosecutors have also denied this.
The presiding judge confessed this is the first case of its kind she has dealt with and therefore said she needed time to consider it, although she pledged it would be dealt with as soon as possible.
Randall and Cheptoyet were released on bail of UGX1.5million ($593,000 €430,000) while their sureties were bonded at UGX500,000 ($198,000 €143,000).
Activists from Uganda Gay On Move have ‘strongly condemned’ the government for the arrests describing them as an ‘invasion of privacy’.
They have warned other people will use some of the trumped-up allegations against the pair as ‘an excuse to blackmail LGBT people’.
The British Foreign Office is aware of the arrest and said it is providing Randall with consular assistance.